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realclimate.org
realclimate.org
This is disappointing. The University of East Anglia keeps talking about needing "permission" from national metrological service partners before releasing the data, but that should have been obtained before the first publication appeared. You couldn't pull this secret data thing in genomics, for example.
Overall this appears to be an attempt at damage control, to get the issue out of the news. Yet those other "5%" of stations are critical for establishing the global trend. They should not have published without them.
http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=17333&channel...
Quote:
The university has confirmed it will make all the data accessible as soon as it us released from a range of non-publication agreements, publication will be carried out in collaboration with the Met Office Hadley Centre.
"We are grateful for the necessary support of the Met Office in requesting the permissions for releasing the information but understand that responses may take several months and that some countries may refuse permission due to the economic value of the data," continued Professor Davies.
"The remaining data, to be published when permissions are given, generally cover areas of the world where there are fewer data collection stations."
(by the by, the thing that pisses me off so much about this as a scientist is that data hiding is a direct assault on reproducibility. I can understand a company keeping some secret sauce to themselves -- no one expects Google to open source GFS. But the whole point of putting out a paper is so that the community of scholars can build on it.)
Its significance is that the people who supply the data can continue charging for it and are able to continue collecting data without being bankrupted.
(Edit: how are you supposed to quote text on Hacker news?)
In any case we should surely be able to pay for the data to be publicly accessible if it is just a question of money. To upper bound it, let's say this data is worth a billion dollars. That is still a lot less than estimated mitigation costs (and is likely a very liberal upper bound!). Whatever it costs, funds for a public database should be the first line item on any climate change bill, with NIH-style penalties for failure to deposit government funded research data.
What we think about excuses depends on when they are offered. If the UEA was talking about needing "permission" from national meteorological service partners in 1996 the excuse would work. In 1998 it would raise eye-brows: surely governments aren't blocking co-operation on meteorology, they have just signed a treaty. Once governments have agreed to cooperate on climate change, this excuse works less and less well as the years go by.
Eventually the excuse morphs into a skeptic's talking point. They can argue that Kyoto was just about politics and nothing to do with science, pointing to the fact that it didn't provide for permission for scientist to publish, and the years rolled by and the omission never got fixed.
How long should we allow, after Kyoto, for meteorological data sharing agreements to be sorted out at the intergovermental level? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article693...
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1107454306.txt
Professor Jones: Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs [Patrick notes: he is referring to McIntyre and McKitrick] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than send to anyone.
...
"Fairly Embarassing" doesn't cut it.
Jones announces his intention to delete data in response to FoI requests rather than hand it over. An FoI request was indeed made. The data are discovered to be missing and cannot be recovered. Losing your data is a career-ender in any other scientific field. When you lost the data is irrelevant.
In the context of the other emails, which reveal collusion to control the peer review process, marginalize critics, and censor comments on the very website linked in the original post, it's very clear they were trying to manipulate the scientific process.
You would think that a scientist who worked in an especially contentious field, with well-funded political enemies and huge amounts of money at stake, would have taken extraordinary measures to establish his bona fides. That would include making his work especially open and accessible, and being at pains to document every single step in his research. That is the scientific ideal, after all.
Not as far as I know. My recollection is that CRU responded to requests for raw data in the past by saying they didn't have it anymore. Happy to be corrected though.
> You would think that a scientist who worked in an especially contentious field, with well-funded political enemies and huge amounts of money at stake, would have taken extraordinary measures to establish his bona fides. That would include making his work especially open and accessible, and being at pains to document every single step in his research. That is the scientific ideal, after all.
I basically agree, with the caveats that a) climate change theory was actually a fairly marginal concern in the '80s and b) I don't equate failure to live up to the scientific ideal to gross misconduct, as you seem to.
Citation please? Also, if the CRU has been admitting to the loss of data all along, why didn't they say as much in their statement about the loss?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article693...
Furthermore, why did Jones, Mann, et. al. spend so much time talking about "hiding from" (their words) FoI requests if the data being requested were lost?
I don't equate failure to live up to the scientific ideal to gross misconduct...
Misconduct is peripheral. The scientific ideal is to approach every situation with reasoned skepticism, and then to use experiments to collect evidence that removes as much doubt as possible.
We have just discovered that we have less evidence, and more doubt, than we thought we did. The proper response is to re-establish those results as quickly and conclusively as possible. Lepidopterists do that much, even knowing that their papers will only be read by a handfull of colleagues.
Global warming is a historic issue and requires a historic response, but it seems there are some who want conclusive proof that their is a problem before they will publicly acknowledge that there might be a problem. I can't imagine why. But considering how virulent an argument about "Science" global warming has become, I think we would do well to remember that science is a method, not a set of conclusions.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6789 quotes them saying they no longer had the raw data in August.
> why didn't they say as much in their statement about the loss?
When exactly did they not say this? They say it on their statement on their website which is currently down but cached at http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:mcd09WUmm08J:https://ww...
> Furthermore, why did Jones, Mann, et. al. spend so much time talking about "hiding from" (their words) FoI requests if the data being requested were lost?
Presumably they were talking about different data.
> The proper response is to re-establish those results as quickly and conclusively as possible.
If this debacle leads to that happening then that would be a great outcome. I don't get the impression that's mostly what CRU's critics want though.
Well done RC.
Skeptics are people who disagree blindly and jump at slips as problem with the whole of climate change; this mentality ignores the rest of a substantial number of datasets.
So yes, science vs skeptics it is.
Personally, I have doubts over AGW, that's not to say I think it's all bullshit, but I have my doubts over some of the claims made, and want to see an open and responsible approach to models, data and results. I am continually angered at being called a 'denier' or 'anti-warmer' just because I don't buy the whole belief system 100%.
Do I think climate change is a serious issue? Yes, Do I think that we'd all be better if we cut back on CO2 emissions? Of course. Do I think that corporations should be held accountable for their effect on the environment? Damned right. Do I think that that there are no other causes? I'm not sure.
Apparently, that makes me a loon, a non-scientist, someone who can't think, a paid shill for the oil industry, a religious fanatic and a rightwing nutjob.
In my view, there is enough evidence right now that the cause of the currently observed climate change is human caused, specifically, due to our massive increase in CO2 production. This evidence comes from multiple independent sources (ice cores, tree rings, satellites) that all point in the same general direction. There isn't any alternative reasonable explanation on the table right now, one that explains all the observations.
What other causes do you think there are?
This isn't the "best" way that scientists should respond to skeptics, it's the only way that a true scientist can respond. Anything else is just playing at science, dressing up opinion as theory, or argument from authority.